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by anshargal 2954 days ago
I would appreciate Intel NUC-style box with GPU equipped Ryzen Pro. I know about NUCs with Intel CPU and Vega M GPU but they seem to be too expensive.
4 comments

Recently build a (close to) NUC size box for an arcade cabinet:

- Morex 557 Universal Mini-ITX Case

- Mini Box PicoPSU-150-XT 12V

- ASRock Mini-ITX Motherboard - AB350 GAMING-ITX/AC

- AMD Ryzen 3 2200G

- Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 low-profile

- 12V/10A power supply with a 5mmx2.5mm plug

- your choice of DDR4 and M.2 SSD

Amazing performance to say the least, the GPU makes a huge difference.

You should be able to make very similar one yourself. Example: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/TQKBD3
That isn't a mini PC unfortunately like the NUCs, that a mini-tower. Also having official NUCs ensures there is good driver support via standardization.
It’s not a mini tower, here’s the case: https://www.inwin-style.com/en/gaming-chassis/Chopin The case size is 9.6" x 3.3" x 8.6". Modern NUCs are 8.7” x 1.5" x 5.5" but unlike that inwin they require external 19V 100W power adapter.

About driver support, based on my experience it’s the other way. Custom designed hardware decreases reliability. I have never encountered issues caused by driver support in the desktop PCs I’ve built from commodity components. But I remember issues caused by non-standard hardware design in e.g. sony vaio laptops.

Zotac might do it; they already have their ZBOX Magnus lineup with Ryzen 5-1400.
Looking forward to the Zotac MA551:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12319/zotac-displays-zbox-ma5...

They said 2nd quarter but there has been nothing but silence since CES.

2200G/2400G only. Nothing with 15W 2700U.
This would be amazing. If it could handle >= 32GB of RAM and 2 SSDs and run two 4K monitors at once, this would be so amazing and replace most of our desktops.
And ECC too.

By breaking Intel's hold on the NUC form factor, it should bring prices down as well.

All Raven Ridge processors have ECC support[1], but it additionally requires motherboard support. Would be great if some laptop manufacturer would undercut prices of current ECC laptops by >1k$ by pairing Raven Ridge with ECC or we get at least a µATX or ITX board.

[1] https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/amd-ama-starts-at-12pm-...

edit: As AMD is already throttling DRAM speed dynamically for Ryzen Mobile to conserve power, it would be an interesting experiment to see if they could throttle ECC DRAM even lower, so that it consumes less power than normal DRAM.

It'd be truly amazing if they had 32 GB of DRAM integrated on the silicon interposer, the way Intel does on the Xeon Phi. That would make manufacture of the machines much easier. Since the memory is not on the same die as the CPU, multiple SKUs can be assembled by just by combining different parts.